Re: storing survey answers of different data types

On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:17:57 +1000, Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Joe Thurbon wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:32:22 +1000, Bob Badour
>> <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>>> My name is Bob, I have property in Canada, my house is 114 years old.
>>> {name=Bob,place=Canada,age=114)
>>>
>>> Different questionnaires. Different tables. A column for each
>>> question. A row for each respondent. All described neatly in the
>>> system catalog.
>> My name is Joe, I have property in Australia, my house if 40 years old.
>> Just wondering, if one of the requirements for a system included
>> something like 'Be able to list all questionnaires', would
>> you still consider one-table-per-questionairre a reasonable design?
>
> Absolutely. It's a simple query from the system catalog.
>

Am I right in saying that there is no standard structure for the system catalog? (Not that that is really germane in a theory newsgroup)

>
>> I think that there is a more abstract question trying to get out
>> of my head. Maybe it's: 'When relations become things that
>> have facts asserted about them, should one stop treating them as
>> relations, and normalise further?" (where normalise is almost certainly
>> the wrong word, but I'm not sure what the right one is.)
>
> You must not be phrasing that well. All interesting relations have facts
> asserted about them. Degree. Cardinality. Functional dependencies. etc.

Of course, you are right.

Which unfortunately means that my question is now going to have to be asked as a series of problems.

(I've just snipped such a problem from this post, because my reply to Gene in this thread ended up being a more succinct description of it).

Cheers,
Joe Received on Fri Apr 24 2009 - 04:31:52 CEST